


8: Shopping

by GraciousK



Series: 30-day OTP Challenge: Johnlock [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: At least he tried, Gen, Internal Monologue, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock experiences an emotion, Shopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 01:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraciousK/pseuds/GraciousK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is assigned a simple chore... but nothing is ever simple with Sherlock, is it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	8: Shopping

**Author's Note:**

> Writing for Day 8 in the [30 Day OTP Challenge](http://ericandy.tumblr.com/post/26596382488/ericandys-30-day-otp-challenge): "Shopping".
> 
> I'm really rather proud of this one; writing someone as simultaneously brilliant and thick as Sherlock is definitely a challenge. Feedback is most welcome!

Sherlock stalked into the building as if on a mission. Which he was, in a sense; John had given him a list, and he was to retrieve the items. A mission, yes - or a quest. To seek out those things which sustained life and brought order to chaos, to acquire them, no, _liberate_ them from this citadel of capitalistic greed, returning to John in triumph and glory.

He snorted a quiet chuckle at his own expense; he could try and reframe his task, but it wouldn't actually make it any more interesting. There was no glory to be found while  _shopping_.

Sherlock took a basket, wrinkling his nose in distaste. Milk, bread, beans, wood polish, boring, boring, _boring_. He scanned the shop, plotting an ideal course through the aisles. Canned goods first, milk last in order to minimize the heat transfer to the perishable liquid.

Sherlock didn't see the point of it. Why expend the effort to prepare food at home? It wasn't as if restaurants were few and far between in the city, all with fully stocked kitchens, some even with skilled chefs. Any of them would surely be able to manage beans on toast, if one were inexplicably in the mood for such pedestrian fare. Though considering the trade-offs between the quality of the food and the required energy expenditure to procure it, beans on toast wouldn't be worth even the short trip to the cafe downstairs. It certainly wouldn't be worth the tedium of _shopping_ , if it weren't for John's stubborn insistence.

Dr. John Watson, he of endless beans on toast, and all those other mundanities that filled most people's empty lives. At least it spared Sherlock the waste of time and effort involved in food preparation. Despite the blandness of the meal, Sherlock rarely turned down the plate John would set at his elbow without comment. Even Sherlock had to acknowledge the convenience of having bodily sustenance delivered at biologically and socially appropriate intervals. And as a means of quickly delivering calories into one's body, beans on toast certainly sufficed.

Sherlock chucked two cans of beans into the basket, supposing he should be grateful to John for relieving him of the burden of feeding himself. Hopefully this shopping trip would be an acceptable token of Sherlock's gratitude. That must be why John insisted on it - the equivalent of payment for services rendered. Perhaps it could also serve as a down-payment for continued service. If that was the case, it wasn't in Sherlock's best interests to be stingy. He pulled some more cans down from the shelf, loading the basket.

Bread was a little trickier; there were two brands John liked and Sherlock hadn't been able to identify a pattern behind John's alternations. It was perishable so he couldn't properly stock up, though if he bought a loaf of each, one could be stored in the freezer. Sherlock dismissed that thought summarily; he had an experiment monopolizing their cold storage space. John became disquietingly agitated when Sherlock didn't maintain a frankly excessive amount of distance between body parts and food, despite Sherlock's assurances that contamination was simply not possible. He'd even sterilized the outer layer of plastic for God's sake, mostly to prevent exactly these complaints than out of concern for food safety. Not that it appeared to make any difference.

 _Gratitude,_ Sherlock reminded himself, and selected a single loaf of the more expensive bread. To be fair, the taboo against contamination was understandable. Sherlock didn't share the need to take it to such lengths, but it wasn't difficult to accommodate. If John could forgive Sherlock's long list of peculiarities, Sherlock could gladly forgive this one of John's.

Slightly harder to forgive was the indignity of having to buy wood polish. Sherlock did appreciate the value of cleanliness, but wood polish wasn't like bleach or Dettol. Wood polish didn't serve any purpose but to prevent dust from settling, which Sherlock objected to on principle. It was tampering with evidence, as far as Sherlock was concerned, and he found it almost as distasteful as book-burning. Sherlock's statements to this effect nearly started a genuine row. John had raised his voice most unexpectedly, declaring it was the least he could do for Mrs. Hudson, listing all of the chores the not-housekeeper performed daily. When John had begun recounting all of the damage Sherlock had done to the wood surfaces, getting increasingly emotional, Sherlock finally acquiesced.

Sherlock scanned the shelves. This act of gratitude felt more like paying a penance. It was true that Mrs. Hudson did take care of a great many things which would have otherwise been daily annoyances, but she appeared to derive some inherent value from it. Unlike John, Mrs Hudson performed her labors freely and didn't seem to require compensation or its social equivalent, gratitude. Indeed, it appeared as though she was set on dusting despite Sherlock discouraging her in every way. While he'd initially agreed to make the purchase solely to assuage John's emotional distress, gallantly sacrificing his own (well-reasoned) preferences for the sake of John's (arbitrary) ones, the fact that Sherlock's actions would make little difference either way made his complicity in the distasteful act easier to stomach.

Sherlock selected a bottle of polish, glancing over the ingredients list. This one contained unscented silicon oil instead of lemon oil, and suddenly Sherlock wondered about the differences between the two products. Are the oils different enough to have an effect on fingerprints left on the treated wood? Would walking on differently treated wooden floors impact the walker's footprints? Or even better, would touching differently treated surfaces impact the fingerprints left later? Sherlock pondered a world of unknowns about the impact of the cleaning products on bare skin, shoe rubber, leather, textiles. Sherlock put the small bottle back, instead hoisting a large jug of silicon-based polish up under his arm and grabbing a second jug that contained lemon oil. Research questions burned in Sherlock's mind, and he wasted no time in heading for the door. A little thrill passed through him; he couldn't wait to get home and begin the tests. He'd need to stop at Bart's first, to pick up some feet. He didn't need to get any hands; toe prints could serve as an analogue for fingerprints.

A protesting employee tried to stop him at the door, exclaiming something about checkouts and shoplifting. This was no time to sit in a queue; there was science to be done. Sherlock thrust a fifty-pound note at him, and seized the opportunity to leave as the man gaped at the denomination.

* * *

"You forgot the milk," John complained, interrupting Sherlock's silent contemplation on the chemistry of silicon oils.

Sherlock opened his eyes, sighing. _There's always something._ "I was interrupted. Something important came up." The feet were tucked away in a cabinet, soaking in a shallow layer of diluted cleaner in order to simulate repeated contact with polished floors; they would need to be removed in precisely seventeen minutes.

"And for some reason, we have enough beans to feed a small nation," John continued, as if Sherlock hadn't said anything. John stamped into the living room from the kitchen, fixing his attention on Sherlock. He didn't move from his position on the couch, his hands clasped against his lips as if in prayer. "Anticipating a bean shortage? Or do you have some experiment planned?" Sherlock didn't bother replying, instead closing his eyes again. John's feet shuffled; from the sound of his jumper, Sherlock figured he was putting his hands on his hips. Sherlock visualized John's posture and expression in his mind's eye. "What is it, Sherlock? Is there something wrong with the beans?"

Sherlock's eyes snapped open and he turned to fix his gaze on John, finding his mental image to be perfectly accurate. "Just stocking up."

"Why?" John asked.

"Down-payment," Sherlock said in clipped tones, straightening his head against the pillow. It occurred to him then that John might not understand, so he spelled it out in the simplest terms he could think of. "The more I buy at once, the less frequently I'll be expected to subject myself to such a trivial diversion."

John shifted his weight in a way that brought to mind the word _sassy_. "You can't just pay off your half of the responsibilities around the flat, Sherlock. Not with all the beans in London. That's not how it works."

"You forgot the wood polish," Sherlock pointed out, hoping John would be assuaged by this concession.

"And you forgot the milk."

Apparently Sherlock contravening one of his core values - preservation of evidence - counted for nothing. "Please do accept my deepest regrets," Sherlock said flatly. That was the appropriate thing to say in such a situation, was it not?

Apparently not. "How did you even survive, before me and Mrs. Hudson?" John asked.

Sherlock popped into a seated position. Despite it being a rhetorical question meant primarily to express John's frustration, Sherlock resented the implication, and he didn't mince words. "You seem to think these little routines of yours, what you call _responsibilities_ , hold some universal importance. They don't. I survived perfectly well before your beans on toast and Mrs. Hudson's tamperings, and I could continue to survive perfectly well without either of you."

John's expression shifted, and Sherlock experienced a nagging reminder that his original intent was an expression of gratitude. His mouth twisted as he realized how counterproductive this line of conversation was to that goal. "Though likely at a slightly lower quality of life," Sherlock backtracked, "and at greater expense." John's face twisted, sending empathetic pangs ripping through Sherlock's guts. Is this what guilt felt like? This was terrible. Sherlock searched for words to ameliorate John's distress, but this was well outside his area of expertise. "I am grateful for your efforts, John. If _shopping_ is the price I pay for those efforts, it is well worth the cost." He paused, searching John's face, recognizing surprise bordering on shock. Was it positive affect, or negative? Hard to discern. In case John still harbored doubts about Sherlock's intentions, he added, "My apologies for the milk are sincere."

John's jaw worked for a second before he spoke.  "You must really hate shopping," John said, a smile breaking across his face. Positive affect. Good.

Sherlock smiled back, glad to have salvaged the situation. "An accurate observation, if somewhat delayed."

"Right," John nodded, still smiling. "I'll get milk the next time I go out, then."

John shook his head and walked back into the kitchen, and Sherlock returned to his prone position. That ended on a much better note than it began. Sherlock even suspected that John would cease to bother him with these sorts of tedious requests in the future.

The sound of a cabinet opening drifted in from the kitchen, and Sherlock smiled again.  He closed his eyes and pictured the expression on John's face at this moment as he made his discovery.  John's footsteps approached the threshold to the living room.  "Feet, Sherlock?"

"I told you, something important came up."

"So those are important feet sitting in our baking pans, are they?"  John huffed - a laugh? Yes, a laugh. "At least they aren't un-important feet, because that would just be over the line."  John returned to the kitchen, and Sherlock knew for a fact that John had forgiven all.

 _Triumph and glory_ , Sherlock thought, and found it a fair assessment.


End file.
